Electronic court filing


Electronic court filing, or e-filing, is the automated transmission of legal documents from an attorney, party, or self-represented litigant to a court, from a court to an attorney, and from an attorney or other user to another attorney or other user of legal documents.

Technical standards

The LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee, a subcommittee of OASIS, with members representing both public and private sector organizations, has developed technical specifications that provide for standardization of the following for electronic filing of court documents:
These XML-based standards support the implementation of electronic court filing but they do not define court policies. In 2003, the National Center for State Courts published .
In the summer of 2009, the NCSC commenced a survey of the usage of e-filing in state courts across the country, including U.S. Territories. The survey responses were published in the .

Release history

LegalXML

  • Collaboration on nonproprietary standards for the legal community
  • Merged with OASIS in March 2002.

ECF 1.1

This version was approved by the NCSC Joint Technology Committee as a recommended standard in 2002.

ECF 2.0

This version number was skipped in order to create a linkage between GJXDM 3.0.

ECF 3.0

  • Leverage new and emerging standards
  • * Volcabularies
  • ** GJXDM
  • ** UBL
  • * Web services
  • ** W3C
  • ** OASIS
  • ** WS-I
  • Use of XML schemas rather than DTD
  • Supports Standards for Electronic Filing Processes approved in 2003.

ECF 4.0

Implementation assistance

In an effort to promote implementation of the ECF 4.0 specification, the OASIS LegalXML ECF committee developed a "quick start guide", the 7 Steps to Electronic Filing with Electronic Court Filing 4.0. The guide provides information on the following topics:
  • Standardize integration methods in an e-filing implementation with XML
  • Integrate with any potential e-filing service provider or share e-filing data between systems or partners
  • Set up a single method of processing data related to e-filing
  • Find out how to implement legal service in an e-filing application
The serves as the primary source of documentation and support.